He's a really great actor as well as being ridiculously handsome. My favourite of his films is actually Sunshine, a Danny Boyle film. It's sort of sci-fi, then turns into a psychological thriller with a bit of horror

Now, Luce, I find not all are Brits but at least non-American, but of great interest to me. I judge that by knowing I would watch a film just because that person was in it. That's sort of the bottom line for me.

BBC Films

The Guardian (Film)

President vies with worst-actor nominees Johnny Depp and John Travolta in the Golden Raspberry awardsDonald Trump may well be kicking off 2019 with a clutch of Golden Raspberry awards after he and his associates received four nominations in Hollywood?s annual ?worst of? lineup.Trump was nominated for worst actor and worst screen combo (along with ?his self-perpetuating pettiness? after his appearances in Michael Moore?s anti-Trump documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 and Dinesh d?Souza?s highly pro-Trump Death of a Nation. Fahrenheit 11/9 also yielded two more Trump-related nods in the worst actress category: his wife Melania will be competing with Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the president and Trump?s former campaign manager. Continue reading...

Alfonso Cuarón?s Netflix-backed memoir and Yorgos Lanthimos period comedy dominated, while Ethan Hawke and Olivia Colman took home acting honoursAlfonso Cuaro?n?s domestic memoir Roma and scabrous period comedy The Favourite dominated the London Film Critics? Circle awards, which were handed out on 20 January.Roma, which has been backed to the hilt by its distributors, Netflix, secured the film of the year award and Cuaro?n won director of the year. With the Acadmey awards nominations being announced on 22 Jamuary, Roma appears to consolidate its position as an Oscar frontrunner. However, The Favourite, which is also a leading Oscar contender, took home the most awards: four, including actress of the year for Olivia Colman (who plays troubled monarch Queen Anne), supporting actress for Rachel Weisz (who plays power-behind-the-throne Sarah Churchill), and British/Irish film of the year. Continue reading...

It is 50 years since Charles Manson?s followers murdered Sharon Tate. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and other films are marking this macabre event, but is it time cinema moved on?

Sharon Tate suffered a terrible fate, but it keeps getting worse. Hers is the most horrific death imaginable, repeatedly stabbed by Charles Manson?s followers in her Los Angeles home, aged 26, and eight-and-a-half months pregnant with Roman Polanski?s baby. Now, as we approach the 50th anniversary of her death this August, it is being restaged again and again.The highest-profile example is Quentin Tarantino?s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, due for release this summer, with Margot Robbie as Tate, and the Manson murders the focal point for a sprawling Tinseltown survey. Tarantino?s Manson, Damon Herriman, also plays the role in the next season of Netflix?s Mindhunter. Continue reading...

Twenty years after the release of The Matrix, its prescient vision of a virtual world continues to mirror events in real life The Matrix has barely started when a phone booth is demolished, left as a smashed pancake of glass and metal. It was a prophetic touch. Payphones were still everywhere in western cities when the film came out in March 1999. By the time of the first sequel four years later, they were already half-vanished, replaced by a private army of Nokias and Motorolas.But now The Matrix is a relic too, a quaint slice of 90s nostalgia about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. ?1999?, the recent song from Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, features wistful lyrics (?Those days, it was so much better?) and cover art in which the millennial pop stars wear the black leather costumes made famous by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as they battled the machines enslaving humanity. Yet for a relic, it never slipped far from view ? still a familiar reference in a world divided between internet and IRL (in real life), its characters endlessly circulating in memes and gifs, often as vehicles for the acrid politics that define our 21st century. Continue reading...

At 71, and tipped for an Oscar for The Wife, Glenn Close reveals she is having more fun than everGlenn Close picks up the phone in her Montana home and all hell breaks loose. Between waves of helpless laughter, she tries to explain exactly what is causing the chaos. ?Sorry to be ? can you hear me? ? oh my God ?there?s a dog going past the house and ? wait there.? The pooch making all that racket is Pip, Close?s pet havanese. He only recently watched one of her films, she tells me; fittingly enough, it was the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians, in which she is a regally evil and blazingly camp Cruella de Vil in black-and-white fright wig and taloned gloves. ?He was absolutely glued to the screen,? she says. Possibly in terror at her puppy-killing plans. Pip has his own Instagram account (he?s Sir Pippin of Beanfield). ?Everyone knows about him, so I?ll have to start posting more things on there,? she says.Now may not be the time. Over the next five weeks, the 71-year-old actor will have numerous awards ceremonies to attend ? including the Baftas on 10 February and the Academy Awards a fortnight later ? and in all likelihood more statuettes to collect in honour of her performance in The Wife as Joan Castleman, the overlooked spouse of a Nobel-winning novelist, played by Jonathan Pryce. Since its premiere nearly 18 months ago, the film has been seducing audiences and critics everywhere, with the Oscar buzz for Close building to a deafening volume. A few weeks ago, she won a Golden Globe; her pop-eyed, gobsmacked expression when her name was read out, followed by an eloquent speech in which she paid tribute to her late mother (?who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life?) and urged women ?to find personal fulfilment?, has won her new legions of fans. Continue reading...

The annual online showcase offers the chance to see new French films months before they reach cinemas At a time when more and more traditional film festivals are catching up with streaming culture ? or pointedly not doing so, as with last year?s Netflix-Cannes fracas ? the annual online MyFrenchFilmFestival stands as something of a trailblazer. Now in its ninth year, this global showcase for French and French-speaking cinema was one of the first of its kind to bridge the exclusivity of the film festival model with the global accessibility of internet viewing.In partnership with Curzon Home Cinema in the UK, from now until 18 February, serious film fans in multiple territories can sample fresh festival fare that may not be released by local distributors for months or years, if ever. As a teenage cinephile growing up in Johannesburg?s semi-arid arthouse climate, I?d have regarded MyFrenchFilmFestival as a kind of miracle. Continue reading...

After repeated attempts to get a movie based on the board game off the ground, Hart will play the lead in what is likely to be a live-action caperKevin Hart has signed up to play the lead role in a film based on the Monopoly board game, it has emerged.According to Deadline, Hart has joined the long-gestating project along with Tim Story, who directed him in Ride Along and Night School. Hart is also credited as one of the producers. Other than the suggestion it will be live-action, no other details are known. Continue reading...

Mayor of Lac-Mégantic, where 47 died in 2013 explosion, demands images of the incident be removed from streaming giant?s sci-fi hitThe mayor of a Canadian town where 47 people were killed in a rail disaster in 2013 has complained to Netflix after images of the incident were used in the hit sci-fi film Bird Box.The accident happened when a train carrying crude oil exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and the BBC reports that Netflix confirmed that footage of the disaster was included in a montage sequence illustrating an attack. Continue reading...

New UK guidelines for films depicting sexual violence follow societal shift, says BBFCScenes of rape and other forms of sexual violence will no longer be allowed in films classified for under-15s in a shake-up of the British ratings system.The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will on Thursday publish new classification guidelines explaining in detail why films get the ratings they are given, from U up to R18. Continue reading...

Comedy star and director who delivered Oscar-winning global hit Lost in Translation spearhead tech giant?s $4bn move into contentTech giant Apple has announced that its first original feature film will reteam actor Bill Murray and director Sofia Coppola for a father-daughter comedy-drama called On the Rocks.According to the Hollywood Reporter, On the Rocks is about a young mother, played by Rashida Jones, who reconnects with her larger-than-life playboy father (Murray) on an adventure through New York. Continue reading...